GTRC Images of Facsimiles

The following are scans of facsimiles contained in The Facsimile Edition of the
Nag Hammadi Codices, Codex II (E.J.Brill, Leiden, 1974). The first 31 pages of
Codex II, and the first six lines of page 32, contain The Apocryphon of John(one of three versions in the NH collection.) The last six lines of page 51 are the
beginning of The Gospel of Phillip. (Following the convention of that time and
place, the title occurs at the end of the work.) These and the other pages of Codex II
have been defaced by the modern inscription of Arabic page-numbers. According to
Bentley Layton (based on a 1962 German publication by Bohlig and Labib), this was
done sometime between 1949 and 1952 "apparently by the librarian of the [Coptic]
Museum, Yassah 'Abd al-Masih ..." (Nag Hammadi Codex II, 2-7, vol. 1, p.2).
But the Coptic Museum didn't receive the codices until June 8th, 1952, so the date
of inscription can perhaps be narrowed to June or July of 1952, plausibly precipitated
by a photographic session conducted at that time, and during which pages 1-100 of
Codex II were photographed. In any case, the numbers are wrong, being at this point
in the Codex two higher than they should be. Codex II is the only codex known to
have been originally wholly unpaginated, although Codex X is apparently mostly
unpaginated, except for pages 3-5. The other codices are either too badly damaged
for the issue to be determined, or have Greek page-numbers (used by the Copts) at
the top of each page. --MWG, 2008.04.08